Inevitability (1)
At last, we had secured a six-month alliance with the Brans Army.
I was intensely curious about what might unfold within their ranks during that time… but looking at Lin — who already seemed as though some essential screw holding her humanity together had come completely loose — it was plain that the Brans Army would fail to make anything of this opportunity and simply crumble.
Would the southern nations take their place, then?
If the continent were reshaped that way, the balance of power would tip in Luna's favor. Yet she still had not raised her banner, and seemed to be spending her time somewhere out of sight.
It wasn't as though I was deeply worried — not about her, of all people — but I couldn't help wondering whether she was doing well.
And come to think of it… what had become of Zinor?
Was he still with the Asius Army?
In the time we'd spent together, he had always been a difficult man to read… but if my letter had reached him and he had made up his mind, he might well have gone to serve under Lady Luna.
Or perhaps he had become a recluse for a while. There were any number of possibilities.
I really can't see even an inch ahead.
If only I could freely input questions into my own mind whenever I wished — instead of needing someone else to ask them. And if only the scope of those questions weren't restricted. How much better would that be?
Given that this game world I had been possessed into required someone else's question before advice could be sought, one could call it faithful to the original design… but what good was fidelity to the source material once it had become reality?
Of course, I had benefited from that design more than once, so I was in no position to complain.
I had no idea whatsoever how things would unfold from here — not a single thing —
and yet one fact remained absolutely certain.
I must protect Lady Serpina's life, no matter what.
The condition for the Serpina Army — or rather, for this nation — to become a unified state was simple.
Serpina had to step down from the throne.
But she was a young and brilliant sovereign who commanded enormous trust within her realm. She was far too healthy for anyone to pin their hopes on illness, and her support among both the common people of her territories and her generals was extraordinarily high — far too high for a revolution to take root.
Sporadic rebellions continued to break out, yes, but every one of them was a lingering aftershock of the old struggle for the crown prince's seat. And the fact that all of them were conducted in absolute secrecy only proved the opposite point: without dredging up some buried claim from the past, there simply was no legitimate pretext for defying her.
In that moment, a fundamental question rose in my mind.
How does she die, then?
Had she gone to the Brans Army in person, she would have died. That much was certain — an inference built on predictions that had never once been wrong.
Assassinated from within the Brans ranks?
Hard to imagine. She wouldn't have gone alone, and with the initiative on our side, there would have been no reason to venture as far as Anel Castle in the first place.
But the existence of a result necessarily meant there was a process leading to it.
Lady Serpina… why was she supposed to die?
It was a future that would no longer come to pass, so there was no real need to dwell on it —
and yet I couldn't help wanting to know the reason.
It was Irene who saw the Brans Army's envoys off at the end.
After collapsing and losing consciousness, Lin had not spoken another word to her. More precisely, she had not spoken a single word to anyone — walking out with a deathly pale face, as limp and lifeless as a patient wasted by disease.
Those two eyes that had once refused so stubbornly to acknowledge Irene were now hollow, empty of any ambition whatsoever.
"……."
After silently watching Parfalle leave — the strategist who tended to her own lord while looking back at Irene with an expression full of complicated feeling — Irene made her way slowly back to where Serpina waited, to deliver her report.
"My lord. The Brans Army's envoys have just departed Aingart Castle."
"I see. You've done well, Irene."
"……."
Irene studied Serpina's face carefully.
Her expression was… cold. And yet, somehow, a trace of human warmth seemed to linger within that coldness.
Why had she gone out of her way to parade Irene and Swen before Lin like that?
Just then—
"What are you thinking so hard about?"
"Pardon? Ah… I, well."
Irene lowered her head with an apologetic look, but Serpina simply closed her eyes a fraction, as if it were of no consequence, and asked again.
"It seems my actions do not make sense to you."
"I would never dare say that I cannot understand my lord's actions."
"Is a retainer not free to think as she likes about the sovereign she serves? A gaze of that sort does not trouble me. Looking at how thoroughly I tormented Lin, one might well call me cruel."
"That isn't what I—"
"However."
Serpina opened her eyes slowly and looked at Irene.
"I will admit that personal feeling entered into it."
"Personal feeling, my lord?"
"Yes. I… simply cannot forgive Lin's choice."
Forgive? Irene had thought there might be some deep rift between the two of them — they were rulers of hostile nations, after all — but she had never sensed any personal grudge. Was there something she didn't know?
"When you say her choice…?"
The moment Irene carefully posed the question, Serpina answered as though she had been waiting for it, looking straight into Irene's violet eyes.
"The choice to cast you aside."
"……!"
"She drove you into a deathtrap and even tried to take your life. A woman like that ought to understand, at the very least, what consequences her decisions have wrought. On top of that, she has lost the miracle mage who once held back our great army with power like magic itself — so her anguish must be considerable. But."
Serpina clenched her fist lightly.
Her dry, cold voice filled the space that held only Irene and herself.
"I simply could not forgive it. Irene — the way she lived on so brazenly, so shamelessly, without so much as considering how you must have felt. That is why I summoned you and Swen here specially. To carve into her the knowledge that her foolish decision produced a result she can never take back."
"My lord…"
What Irene felt in that moment was pure gratitude.
Serpina was angry at Lin — not the formal, ceremonial anger one directed at an enemy in a war between nations, but something more personal. And the reason she was angry… was Irene herself.
"I truly, truly despise those who cast aside the people who have sworn them loyalty."
Having said that, Serpina let out a short sigh, then spoke again with every emotion stripped from her face.
"I've gone on too long about personal matters. In any case, I thank you for playing along with my little performance. Seeing your former lord cannot have been a pleasant experience for you either."
"Not at all, my lord. …Thank you for thinking of me."
Irene bowed her head in greeting.
If there was one thing that had not changed since she left Lin, it was her absolute loyalty to Swen. And yet… in a corner of her heart, gratitude toward Serpina was unmistakably taking root.
She had sometimes wondered whether she would have served Lady Serpina at all if not for Swen — but she knew full well the irony that without Swen, she would never have met Lady Serpina in the first place.
After all, Serpina had been a wicked tyrant. A cunning witch who threatened the peace of the continent.
"……."
Serpina, for her part, sank into thought.
Had helping Irene truly been an act of pure goodwill?
If she asked herself whether she had thought only of Irene… that would probably be a lie.
It was not entirely a lie. The anger she had felt toward Lin Brans for treating Irene that way had been real.
But—
if that had been all there was to it, she would never have gone so far as to crush Lin this thoroughly.
A bitter smile touched her lips at her own hypocrisy, and she thought of the one she truly wished to claim for herself.
Swen. The white-haired mage she had kept meeting in her dreams. The man presumed to possess the power of the Mind's Eye.
The one who drew her with a pull she could not put into words.
Since Swen seemed to hold Irene especially dear, Irene was inevitably becoming someone special to Serpina as well.
Swen. I am in earnest. If I can make you mine, there is nothing I would not do.
For now, he still sometimes called her "Lady Serpina" without thinking.
But someday — if she could push aside that nameless someone who still lingered in his heart and become his one and only "lord"…
For Serpina, who had lived with the sole purpose of unifying the continent, a second purpose had been born.
On the road home after the alliance had been secured, Parfalle approached the soldier driving the carriage and carefully asked a question.
"How is my lord's condition?"
"Unchanged. She says nothing… and she will not eat. She takes only the barest minimum of water."
"I see…"
After collapsing while crying out Swen's name, and after regaining consciousness —
Lin had spent her time in silence, speaking not a word, as though she had become a broken shell of a person.
No matter how many times anyone spoke to her, no answer came. When they sought her orders, none were given.
Those once-vivid eyes had long since gone dull and lifeless.
And so the work of coordinating the return journey and directing the envoys fell to Parfalle, the State Tactician.
Fortunately, her standing within the Brans Army was not poor, and the others accepted her instructions without much resistance.
She's simply in shock right now, overwhelmed by grief. She was so devastated by losing Swen. But… once we return and produce real results, Lady Lin will surely go back to the way she was.
All Parfalle could do was think as positively as possible and prepare for the future.
And so, as she continued south day and night, turning over strategies against the Hesna Army in her mind, one day a soldier approached her carefully.
"Lady Parfalle. I believe we need to change our return route."
"Is there a reason?"
Looking troubled, the soldier reported the fact laid out before his eyes exactly as it was — a fact that had already come to pass.
"Well… the gorge that forms the shortest path is blocked by boulders, as if there was a landslide… I'm afraid we'll have to take a detour."
"Is that so?"
Why now, of all times?
They needed to return to Anel Castle as quickly as possible and reorganize the southern front… The thought crossed her mind for a moment, but there was nothing to be done about something that had already happened.
"…Understood. We'll adjust the route."
"Yes, ma'am."
And so Parfalle pressed on, taking a somewhat longer road than the one by which she had come — leading a Lin who had lost all will to do anything.
A path blocked by a landslide.
To the Brans Army, this "fact" was nothing more than a tedious delay that cost them time.
But.
That same "fact" was beginning to take on an entirely different meaning — somewhere else, for someone else entirely.